Our early morning train ride through the Tuscany countryside got us to Rome with more than enough time to explore the most famous attractions as well as get lost several times.
Luckily, the directions to our hostel were very straight forward. The directions they included with our reservation confirmation said, "We are at number 36, in a small and ancient building," and sure enough our hostel with the smallest, most ancient building I've ever seen.
We dropped our bags off and went off in search of the ruins that I was most excited to see, the Colosseum. Surely a monument as large as the Colosseum would be easy to find, right? Well after wandering around for at least an hour, we finally spotted it, and WOW it's HUGE! We saved 8 euros and countless hours of waiting in line and skipped going inside and instead meandered through the bajillion other ruins that surround the Colosseum.
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| Emily, Shauna, and I at the Colosseum |
Just in the first day, we made it to Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and a gazillion other monuments/ruins. Needless to say, our feet were dead by the end of the day. We all threw coins over our shoulders into Trevi Fountain, ensuring our return to Rome one day, and really really hope that I will be able to return.
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| Trevi Fountain |
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| Emily and I in front of some ruins.... after seeing so many ruins, you tend to lose track of their names :p |
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| The Pantheon |
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| Inside the Pantheon |
At the end of the day, we found the perfect little Italian restaurant for dinner, La Carbanera. This restaurant has been owned by the same family for 104 years!!! And it was DELICIOUS :] I really like pasta, but after my meal at La Carbonara I LOVE pasta. Too bad I don't know how to make pasta from scratch by hand like they do.
We added our own messages to the walls of La Carbanera, as hundreds of others like us had for the past 104 years.
The next morning we woke up extra early and hiked all the way across Rome to the Vatican. Everyone we talked to told us we should take the bus, but not wanting to get lost on the confusing bus system in country whose language is completely foreign, we opted to walk for an hour and a half instead. Fortunately, we bought our tickets to the Vatican Museums the week before and got to skip the ginormous line of people who weren't as smart as us :p The size of the Vatican Museums was exhausting... and it was rare to find a wall/ceiling/floor that wasn't some sort of mural. The Sistine Chapel was the final part of our morning in the museums. We weren't allowed to take photos inside the Sistine Chapel, but that's fine because I honestly don't think pictures would have done it justice. It was truely breathtaking. I can't image how Michelangelo painted all of it while lying on his back on giant scaffolds and not gone crazy. We ended our morning at St. Peter's Basilica before spending the rest of the afternoon randomly exploring more of Rome.
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| Courtyard in the middle of the Vatican Museuma |
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| Hallway full of massive tapestries |
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| St. Peter's Basilica |
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| Castle and bridge of Sant'Angelo |
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| Four Rivers Foutain |
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| Outdoor market near Four Rivers Fountain |
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| Tomb of the Unknown Soldier |
Our last night in Rome, our hostel had a pasta party on their roof top terrace. We gorged ourselves on free pasta, but, of course, we still managed to have room for gelato :]
All in all, Rome was an absolute success and was one of my favorite trips of the whole semester.
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